Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

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12/23/2010 1:41:33 PM
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Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now here Dec 23

I just installed and am playing with it.  Awesome! Just Awesome!

For everyone new to Artisteer 3.0 here is the summary of the new features:

* Website creation features with support for editing pages and blog posts
* Web design and website samples
* Support for fluid layouts (resizable sheet width)
* Interactive web design preview area (clicking a web design element navigates to corresponding tab in Artisteer)
* Ability to specify design styles for the "Suggest" feature, generating thematic web designs (corporate, simple, retro, etc.)
* Custom CSS options in Export Options
* WordPress theme code based on the default WP 3.0 TwentyTen theme
* Additional header and background graphics
* Additional color themes
* Website hosting service at www.artisteer.net

I will not be installing any new 3.0 themes with mojoPortal till after the final release and until after Joe has done an upgrade compatible with V 3.0.

However it's fun to play now and save any cool new creations.

Should be about 2 weeks before we see the final version.

Rick(Arvixe)
 

12/24/2010 5:56:15 PM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Thanks for the update Rick! I'm looking forward to trying the page-wide headers and footers with fixed-width page. That seems to be a popular styling choice these days.

 

12/28/2010 8:33:31 AM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Hi All,

fyi, I couldn't resist trying out Artisteer 3.0 since it is very close to shipping.

For those working from the mojoPortal source code repository, support for Artisteer 3.0 has landed in the repository. I've upgraded the artisteer-24* skins to artisteer-30* and added 2 new skins, one was a sample included with Artisteer, it is named artisteer-30alphamotors, and one that I created myself named artisteer-30business1. You can also see these skins now on demo.mojoportal.com

I have archived the previous versions of those artisteer-24* skins and will make them available in the extraskins.zip file that is available with each release, so they will still be available for those who do not upgrade to Artisteer 3.0 for whatever reason, but I could not see keeping them in the package since the 3.0 versions of the same skins are the same designs just with slightly different implementations.

There are of course some differences in the output produced by Artisteer 3 than previous versions. Most of the changes are reflected in the layout.master files of the new version skins, but there were a few minor changes that needed additional options in mojoPortal to produce the correct markup. These differences are reflected in different settings in the theme.skin file which enables the new markup, while previous versions of Artisteer are still supported by other settings in theme.skin in older skins.

The instructions for creating a mojoPortal skin from an html export from Artisteer are essentially the same as before except that you use the artisteer-30* skins as a starting point. Which skin you use as a starting point is still based on the menu location and whether using vertical horizontal or both menu types. The new Fluid layouts of Artisteer have no impact on this since there is no difference in html markup for fluid layouts, only differences in CSS.

You'll notice that the files exported by Artisteer include jquery.js (which actually has both jquery and sizzle.js inside it), since mojoPortal already includes jquery you do not need to include that file in your skin. I've added sizzle.js as a separate file and there is a setting on <portal:ScriptLoader in the artisteer-30* skins that makes it load the sizzle.js.

So, if you are working from our repository, feel free to try out Artisteer 3.0 designs and let me know if you run into any problems. 

Best,

Joe

12/28/2010 9:42:09 AM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Thanks Joe, your quick work is appreciated as always!

Jamie

12/29/2010 6:05:56 PM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Hi Joe, I had a chance to upgrade one of our Artisteer 2.4 skins to 3.0, and put it into the test environment. It went quite smoothly. I based it on Artisteer-30headermenu. The only "nonstandard" thing I needed to do was override the padding to 0px in the .art-menu selector in style-artisteer-overrides. That may have been because your sample was using a tabbed menus, where mine is a button bar.

Is step 8 in the Creating Skins from Artisteer document now obsolete? I see that Artisteer 3.0 is using h3 for sidebar titles now, and you don't have those extra h2.moduletitle overrides any longer.

Jamie

12/30/2010 11:59:57 AM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Hi Jamie,

Artisteer 3.0 uses h3 tag for side bar columns, my recollection is that they just used divs for previous versions which was semantically unacceptable to me so the instructions were more complicated in order to have real headings there while still keeping the Artisteer style.

I'm not entirely wild about h3 there, really it seems like h2 would be better. The document structure should never have an h3 without an h2 somewhere above it, but they also changed the slogan to an h2 which I'm also not wild about but at least that makes the document structure correct semantically since it is above the h3s used in the left side bar and the h2 in the center is above h3 used in the right column.

So in the end I decided to just make it use the headings as prescribed/output by Artisteer because it does reduce the steps to converting the design to a mojoPortal skin. Someone like me with strong opinions about the headings could still use h2 in the side bars and modify the css accordingly, there is a setting in theme.skin on ModuleTitle which controls it.

I think there may also be some occasional design glitches (in some designs) when upgrading a design that was originally created in older versions of Artisteer vs new designs created from scratch in the new version. I also have noticed some rendering anomalies under IE 7 even in the html output from Artisteer (not just in the mojoPortal skin created from it) so I think Artisteer still has some bugs to work through. Hopefully these issues will be resolved in the final 3.0 release.

Best,

Joe

12/31/2010 12:15:59 PM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Hi Joe

Arvixe just released a beta update (December 30)!!!

Thanks for jumping on Artisteer V 3.0 so soon.

I noticed in TortoiseHg that artisteer-greenlagoon( my favourite) and artisteer-swirly1 do not have a artisteer version number.  What version are they?

I just sent you a couple of beer in appreciation.

Works busy for me the next few weeks but I'm sure I'll sneak some time to try it on my mojo web site.

Rick (Arvixe)

1/3/2011 5:28:59 AM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Hi Rick,

Thanks as always for the beers!

artisteer-greenlagoon was (I guess) produced with Artisteer 2.3 but I did not make that design, I downloaded it as an html template from here before I ever purchased Artisteer. It was my proof of concept first skin, after getting it to work I purchased Artisteer 2.3 and artisteer-swirly1 was the first one I made myself (though I never thought it was very good looking). So I keep those 2 skins around primarily so people can use them as a starting point for Artisteer 2.3 or from designs downloaded from the above linked site. I also agree that artisteer-greenlagoon is one of the best looking ones, I think Artisteer had some licensing issues and changed some of the images included in the product since that beach image does not seem to be there anymore.

I'll have to re-export the skins using the latest update and then again with the final release.

Best,

Joe

1/4/2011 7:41:07 AM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Hi Joe, 

I'm trying mojo on my new site and I'm quite impressed by it, you're doing a great job. 

Not sure if this is appropriate place for this post but since I'm doing Artisteer 3.0 theme I thought it could fit here. 

Conversion from template was rather easy, did require few fixes, but got it done - except on thing - I can't style "active" menu. It seems like some javascript overwrites it, since in a split-second I can see my color (set Aqua just to see it better) and then it gets overwritten and there is no CSS pointing to aqua background color any more. 

Site is on my local pc, so you gonna have to play with hosts if you will have time to see this behaviour. Ping logon-hr.homedns.org and then use that ip in hosts for hostname: opcina-veliki-bukovec.hr so you could access http://opcina-veliki-bukovec.hr

Then click "Opcina Veliki Bukovec" in main menu and refresh page. On page refresh, you can see blink of aqua which then gets overwritten with inactive color. I also had problems with styling submenu items, but I sorted it with !important tag which fixed it (otherwise text color is white and unreadable even though css says black). script.js isn't causing this problem. 

I also noticed there is no stylemenu.css in artisteer themes. They are not needed? I did try copying one from another skin, it changed menu, but this particular problem was still there. 

If you could give me any insight on what could be causing this, I would be very grateful. 

With regards, 

Mario B. 

1/4/2011 1:03:30 PM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Hi Mario,

So you are working from our source code repository? That is the only version of mojoPortal that has the needed changes for Artisteer 3.

If you are using the latest mojoPortal code and having trouble with an Artisteer 3.0 skin, you could zip up both your skin and the .artx file and send it to me at joe dot audette at g mail dot com and I will take a look at it tomorrow. 

Best,

Joe

1/4/2011 1:17:09 PM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Thanks Joe, files sent.

1/5/2011 9:49:38 AM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Hi Mario,

Yesterday I made a fix in the Artisteer menu so that it now correctly highlights the currently active page. If you get the latest code and rebuild the solution I think you will find it works correctly.

The only other problem I noticed was the dynamic sub menu in your skin was using white text on a light colored background. This is probably caused by the javascript for the ASP.NET menu which sets some style on the menu that conflicts with the Artisteer CSS. I was able to fix it by adding this in your style-artisteer-overrides.css like this:

.art-menu a .t
{
  color: #232F13 !important;

}

the color is the same as defined in style.css but the !important makes it work around the style added by the menu javascript.

Hope it helps,

Joe

1/5/2011 3:09:41 PM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Hi Joe, 

Thanks for the effort, but I can not pickup the changes. 

I did the following:

  • updated solution (VisualHG is showing this info: 731 (f7aa83012b33) default tip
    Merge changes from joedev branch)
  • cleaned and rebuild entire solution
  • published Web project to IIS
  • restored user.config and Data\Sites\1 folders

Active menu is behaving the same, could it be I'm updating from wrong branch in hg? Do I need to change anything in styles to make active menu work?

Thanks, 

Mario B. 

1/6/2011 6:51:32 AM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Hi Mario,

I think you are not getting the updates correctly, you should not be doing any merging nor using the joedev branch for anything, that is my developer sandbox, I merge my changes from there into the default branch and you should always use the default branch and never use my sandbox branch.

After you pull all change sets by using the green down arrow in Repository Explorer, then you need to close out of Repository explorer and right click the topmost folder and choose TortoiseHG > Update to apply the change sets to your working copy. In the update dialog make sure it points to the default branch do not update to my joedev branch.

I'm not sure the implications of the merging you did, you may need to get a clean clone of the repository if all else fails.

Hope it helps,

Joe

1/6/2011 2:23:07 PM
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Re: Artisteer V. 3.0 final beta avail now Dec 23, 2010

Hey, 

I got it sorted, it was simply Hg doing stuff differently than I'm used to (svn). 

Thanks a lot for help, Joe. 

Mario

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